


Inches Apart

by orphan_account



Category: The X-Files RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-23
Updated: 2015-08-23
Packaged: 2018-04-16 21:35:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4641006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written in 2008 as hauntsme.  Wrong, evil, bad, made-up, I am warped, so on and so forth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Inches Apart

**Author's Note:**

> Dear David Duchovny's Lawyers: Please don't sue me. You can sue dashakay because this is her fault.

She is sleek and cool in satin, her belly high and her hair long. He wonders again what the fuck they were thinking and whether he's ridiculous for having wanted to do this or whether she is for not having wanted to and doing it anyway. But there's a swarm of fans and press, all roasting beneath the California sun, and he realizes it's too late to give a shit anyhow.

There's Mark, mooning over her as is right and proper. Her smile is wide, her laugh silly as ever, bubbling up at the slightest provocation. She belongs to someone again and, at least for now, it makes her happy. She craves it, he knows, the sense of family and order. He contemplates what it is about her that needs to be loved and owned when she seems to struggle against confinement. He is suddenly, painfully aware of his rumpled suit, his absent wife and the pile of shit that is due to very shortly hit the fan.

He remembers the stretches of loathing her, of wanting to wrap his fingers around her white throat and shake the insufferable look off her face. Of wanting to drag her to bed at the same time. "You wanna hate fuck her," Callum-as-Lew had said to David-as-Hank. Art imitating life indeed.

She delivered her lines perfectly when she was pissed at him. They flung themselves off her tongue like lemmings in that clipped Scully-voice. Then she'd give him an icy glare before stalking wordlessly from the set. She'd retreat to the confines of her trailer, where she soothed herself with her dog, her child and whatever bullshit philosophy struck her scattered fancy at the moment.

 _Bitch_ , he'd think, knowing she was disgusted with him for her own unfathomable reasons and that trying to puzzle them out was an exercise in futility. Knowing too that it would pass. She'd bring him a beer and they'd sit, letting the past couple of weeks burn off like an early-morning fog. Then one of them would lean in too close and it would end with their hearts galloping in their chests as he tangled his fingers in her hair, feeling the high arch of her foot on his hip.

For a time, she was everything wrong with his life. She was infidelity, a job he was sick of and professional uncertainty all wrapped up in blue eyes, full lips and a sense of us-against-the-world that led them time after time after time to bed. They were nothing alike and everything alike; caught up in so much craziness that they truly believed they were the only ones who could understand each other. Familiarity breeds contempt, they say, but it can breed other things too. She taught him that you can need someone wholly without being in love with them. It was a hard lesson, but a good one, and one they wrote on each other's bodies until it seared the flesh and worked down to the bone.

It's more than six months after the fact, but even under the blaze of an LA sky, he can feel the ghosts of her cold hands on his back. "Warm me up," she'd said after being out too long in the raw Vancouver winter with a cigarette dangling from her fingers. He'd peeled her clothes off of her without another word.

It triggers the memory of the first time, when they were young and he used his eight years' seniority and his resume to get her into bed. She'd smoked a joint afterwards, confessing that she'd spent the last of her money on an outfit and a manicure for the callback. The show took off and he feared that she'd cling, but instead she drove him up the wall with a combination of irascible moodiness and a girlish giggle that didn't go with Agent Scully's severe worldview. She was impulsive and prone to bitchiness, her proclivity for faux pas bordering on the legendary. He was brooding and acid-tongued, making remarks he regretted uttering about lapses in judgment she probably regretted having.

He thinks of how terribly important it all seemed in the days when they were at once over-exposed and far too isolated. Bitter words over money, contracts, and too many long hours when they'd rather be anywhere else. He's glad that’s all behind them. They can enjoy the proximity without the pressure-cooker intensity. He looks up as she moves over to him, squinting, shielding her eyes with her hand. She is smiling again, her necklace catching the light and scattering it like a prism. She looks up, murmuring something that he cannot hear over what sounds like a convention of hysterical dolphins. He leans down and, on a whim, reaches out to catch the sparkling crystal beads she's wearing.

 _Do you remember the last premiere?_ she breathes. _I wore a red dress and we -_

 _Yes_ , he says in the quietest voice he has. He takes care not to let his eyes flick down to the front of her dress.

 _Bathroom off the main corridor behind the auditorium,_ she tells him, her chin jutting a fraction of an inch towards the theater.

Her smile is impish and he is torn between wanting to kiss her right there and wanting to tell her Vancouver was the last time. But every time with her is always the last time. He drops his fingers from her necklace and thinks, what the hell? It's all falling apart and she's pregnant, so what's the risk to anyone? This is the honeymoon month before the tabloids are going to have a field day with his life and he'll become a late night punchline. He is strangely appreciative that her knowledge of this hasn't done a thing to change her behavior.

He takes a step back, aware that they've already stood too close for too long. She's the swigs he stole of his father's scotch. Irresistibly forbidden and oddly therapeutic as it worked burning tendrils down to his stomach. He knows her thighs will feel like suede against his cheeks and that she'll taste like the ocean that keeps them distant but has yet to make them strangers.

She turns to sign an autograph, the scent of white flowers wafting from her summer-warm skin. She is blithe and guileless today. He forgives himself his trespasses and decides that she is the very least of his sins.

 


End file.
